The Bensons had been given an assignment as well as the Eltons, and they were to go to work in Maryland. It was arranged that the Eltons would travel together with them some part of the way, before proceeding West. Mrs. Benson, therefore, was particularly interested in learning as much as possible about what would be useful to help the poor people of Maryland; and Mrs. Elton occasionally could not escape being drawn, with an American clergyman's wife, Mrs. Stanley, as guide, on forays in her chariot into the poor quarters of Boston.
"Though," Mrs. Stanley explained, as they rolled along one August day, "there is nothing like such poverty in Boston, as there is in the South. Boston is a rich city, and more to the point a right-thinking one; we would never suffer such slums and poverty as there are in other cities, and as I daresay exists is in your old country."
"Why, there are no slaves at all in England," answered Mrs. Elton, indignantly, "and there were very few poor people at all in Highbury. That is - I think - we gave away soup at the Vicarage to anyone in need; but only very seldom did anyone have to be resigned to the poorhouse. All that sort of thing is exceedingly well arranged for, I would have you know, in England."
"Yes, but Highbury is a prosperous village," put in Mrs. Benson.
"To be sure, I suppose it is," said Mrs. Elton, somewhat surprised; "but how could you know that?"
"Why, I have heard you speak of it a great many times now," said Mrs. Benson, laughing, "of Mr. Knightley, and Mr. Weston, and their wives, and all about conditions in Mr. Elton's parish. Charitable concerns are under the patronage of the good ladies there, and I am sure no one in Highbury ever goes without for very long; but you must know it is a very different thing in England's larger cities and towns."
"Well, to be sure," said Mrs. Elton, "I have seen quite as much of the world as a young woman like yourself can have done, Mrs. Benson; I have spent several seasons in Bath, and I never in my life saw so many beggars there as one sees every day in Boston."
"Bath is a place of fashion," Mrs. Benson reminded her, "yet that city, too, has its poor. Perhaps they are kept rather more out of sight than is the case here. You know the poor are always with us, Mrs. Elton - that fact cannot be escaped. There is positive need of all sorts, everywhere, in English cities as well as here; starving children, and poor unfortunate girls, and other sights that would break your heart."
"Aye - to be sure," sighed Mrs. Elton, "and I have such a tender heart; I am quite a proverb for it, at home in dear Highbury. But why then did not you and Mr. Benson remain in London, if there is such a field for activity there?"
"I should have been satisfied," was the answer, "but Mr. Benson is more advanced in his ideas. In his correspondence with Dr. Channing, he became imbued with his philosophies, and thought that however urgent are the needs of the poor in London, the condition of the slaves is yet a deeper sort of misery, and he could do the most good in America."
"I don't know if America will thank you for that," exclaimed Mrs. Stanley. "You know we don't like to be taught anything by the old country; and I think you will find slavery a more intractable institution than you give it credit for."
"We have no illusion that we can do anything substantial or immediate toward the abolition," responded Mrs. Benson, "but still, there is much of individual good that can be done for the poor people, and those still enslaved are the most in need of the comforts of the Gospel, to help them to endure."
As proudly as Mrs. Stanley assured her new English friends that Boston was a progressive city where blacks and whites mixed freely, it nevertheless did not escape the notice of either Mrs. Benson or Mrs. Elton that the freeborn blacks did not travel alongside the white citizenry in the public carriages, and that if the shantytown where most of the black population dwelt was not considered a region of misery, then those in other cities must be unspeakable indeed.
The ladies dubiously inspected a series of small wooden shacks by the river, the boards inches apart from one another so as to produce pleasant currents of air in summer, but which would allow snowy blasts to enter in winter. In one room Mrs. Elton counted fourteen abject, ragged human souls, those that were not upon the bare and splintered, dirty floorboards, lying upon a thin mattress together. Their clothing was a moving mass of merest greasy rags, and the odour that emerged was something Mrs. Elton had never encountered before in her life.
"Oh! those poor souls!" she exclaimed, emerging backwards from the black hole of a place, her fingers pinching her long and pointed nose. "How unbearable! How disgusting! How can we ever help them in their wretchedness?"
"We have seen but too many of these places," said Mrs. Benson soberly. "What is being done, Mrs. Stanley?"
"A Ladies' Aid has been formed, and we hope to clear out these slums and have decent lodgings built," that lady said briskly. "These poor people come from up the country, and find no work in town, and have nowhere to turn. It seems an hopeless business, Mrs. Elton; but the American spirit of enterprise will prevail in the end, you may be sure."
"It will be well if it does," said Mrs. Elton faintly, "could not we persuade other ladies to adopt some of those ragged children, and see that they are educated?"
"That would be a good work," agreed Mrs. Benson, "only there are so many children that must be helped. I think, when we reach Maryland, the best thing will be to establish a school, and teach the children decent ways. Sewing, and cooking, in addition to reading and writing, of course; and perhaps we may be able to have some of their parents in night classes. Oh, it will be a fine prospect!"
"I dare say it will," said Mrs. Elton, much subdued, "you have your heart in your work, I see."
"How can a human heart turn aside, when one sees those poor children?" cried Mrs. Benson, her eyes flashing.
"All very well and good, but you cannot change the world," said Mrs. Stanley, "to think you can do so is preaching and moonshine. Come, now, and I will take you to inspect a school for young working women - another very deserving and needy class."
By the end of the stay in Boston, Mrs. Elton's head was whirling with the inevitable reaction to all the poverty she had seen and the schemes for its amendment that she had heard proposed. Far from wishing, as in her first days in the city, to spend her time haunting the fancy goods shops, she was now among the most enthusiastic and convinced of converts to charity-work. She was as persuaded as any lady in Boston that this was the highest avocation that could possibly be; and was on fire with new ideas and plans that were to alter the existing abuses and abominations and make a new world in a very short time, an accomplishment for which she would receive due praise and credit.
CHAPTER SIX
The first stage of the Eltons' journey South was taken by stage-coach, which bounced so roughly through the woods and among the g stumps, that it took some time for them to learn how to hold on well enough to be able to look out the window. After an interminable day, during which the coach's wheels were several times stuck in mud, they pulled up at an inn, which was, Mrs. Elton was to discover, a very typical specimen of what might be found in American travels in general. The passengers alighted, their bones aching from their uncomfortable ordeal, and were ushered into a room where a long, boarding-house table was covered with pork, salt fish, potatoes and bread, while flies buzzed over all. Several strangers had already begun heartily feeding, looking neither to the right nor the left of them. Mrs. Elton at once disdained to join this company, and ordered that her food be served in her own room.
The landlord, an unwholesome-looking man with long, greasy grey hair and many missing teeth, looked up briefly from the head of the table, where he sat with his face in a bowl of bread-and-milk. "Oh, no you don't, old woman," he addressed her. Mrs. Elton looked about, to see who he could possibly be addressing so rudely.
"Yes, you, the English party. My old woman can't be doing for everybody different; you're no better'n anybody else, and if you want to eat, must sup with the common herd."
Mrs. Elton tossed her head, and refused to deign
a reply. "You may do as you like, Mr. Elton, about this most offensive insult; but the children and I will endure no more.
Will you show us to our rooms, please," she haughtily addressed the man's wife, a blowsy woman some years younger than her husband, who was placing dishes upon the table.
"I can't now, dearie, I'm serving, but if you want to go to your room, it's up the stairs, take a left turning. I'll bring you something later," she hissed in a loud whisper, turning her head from her husband, who heard what she said.
"If you do that, old woman, it's out of your own uncommon softness; I wouldn't put up with the airs and graces of that English old woman however. But it's on your own head, be it," he said indifferently.
Some time later, Mrs. Elton and her little maid Kitty had given the children some sort of wash, when the inn keeper's wife appeared with a tray holding a bowl of bread-and- milk that looked as if it might have been the identical bowl left over from the landlord's dinner. "Here you are. I do understand, you keeping to your old country ways," she said, not unkindly, "but you'll see, if you don't mind me saying so, it won't answer here. America, you know, is a free country, and everybody's equal; we don't put up with anybody that gives themselves airs and graces and makes out they're better nor anybody else. Some folks might take offence at that, see. So, a word to the wise; and if you'll come down and take breakfast with everybody else, it'll spare me many an angry word from my husband."
Mrs. Elton was so taken aback by this extraordinary speech, that she made no answer, and only stared, leaving Mr. Elton to thank the landlady, and Kitty to feed the children helpings of bread and milk.
The next morning the travellers resumed the coach, and half the day was not sufficient for Mrs. Elton to vent her feelings.
"I never heard the like! Impertinent, half-bred, presuming creatures, without the least idea how to address a lady! And dirty! Did you see the flies - and the linen last night, I could barely close my eyes, for fear of vermin. Boston was pretty well, Mr. Elton, but I misdoubt that in the rest of the country accommodations will be of the order of the barn and the pig stye. God knows what it shall be tonight. Not that I suppose it is possible to fare worse than we have thus far."
"Never mind, Mrs. Elton," said Mrs. Benson kindly, "we will reach New York in a few days, and that city, they say, is quite as fine as Boston. We may pass some time there comfortably before we venture south."
"Yes; I should wish to visit some of the churches in New York," said her husband. "But I fear, Mrs. Elton, if you find the inns in the North-East part of the country lacking, you will not at all like what we may discover farther South, where conditions are generally considered to be far poorer, I believe."
"But in farming communities - the wide open fields surely we will find the inns cleaner and the food fresher in such places," she protested, with a shudder.
"Now, see here," spoke up a strange man with a broad, red face who was crowded in to make the eighth in the coach, and whom Mrs. Elton suspected of having had too much to drink, though it still wanted hours before noon, "I'm getting tired of hearing you abuse our fine country and its ways, missus. Why, everybody knows that America is the finest country in the world, and its inns and hotels have the latest comforts, and the best victuals anywhere. Your crowned heads and tyrants of Europe could live no better than we do upon the road, I calculate, old woman."
Mrs. Elton was irritated enough to reply, "And how do you know that? Have you ever travelled in Europe, sir?"
"No; but I have no need to do any so foolish a thing. There ain't no reason, when everyone knows America can't be beat. Every freeborn man in America can tell you it is our government as makes us free, while you are lorded over by lords, and are no better than slaves. Why, good lack, no one can have the motive to run a decent business, or treat customers right, when it's all for the sake of they lords."
"Slaves! It is your country that keeps slaves, I believe," said Mrs. Elton, with a sniff.
"There is something in what you say," cried Mr. Elton hastily, "exactly so. But, my dear sir, no country is perfect; and you will admit that the inn in which we passed last night, was no model."
"Why, no, I don't say it is the very best; I have travelled a great deal, being a merchant, you know Winthrop by name, and I sell all manner of dry goods in my emporium in Worcester - and I come down to New York two and three times a year - but yet it is a comfortable place enough. Good food, good cheer, you know; and everyone treated as equals; what more could you ask? I reckon your English old woman will have to change some of her snobbish idees, if she wants to get along with we."
Mrs. Elton tossed her head, and did not deign to answer.
Some miles farther on, the coach stopped for another couple, and despite the protests of the already seated passengers, that the coach was intended for eight and no more, a man and his wife must be made room for. "We're bound to give them room," insisted the coachman, "and you can shove your fripperies aside, I reckon; this lady's got only her bandbox, and them children can sit on their ma's lap."
"But we have paid in advance for our seats," protested Mr. Elton.
"Can't be helped; these folks is paying customers, too, and I won't leave 'em in the dust."
The merchant was the only one who seemed entirely glad to welcome the new inhabitants of the coach, on the grounds that they were "more Americans." He quickly found out that the new man had a thriving farm tools business, and for the next hours the only sound that was heard above the jolting noise of the coach, was that of their conversation, which grew louder, as the merchant shared the contents of his little brown bottle with his new friend, and they grew increasingly moved to assert their opinions of all things English. The woman drew herself back into her bonnet, and from what Mrs. Elton could see of her face, looked grim and unsocial, while the menfolk made free.
"That's what riles me up about them English. Take these folks here. Think they're better than what we are, and never do a lick of work," Mr. Winthrop concluded a long oration, with a satisfied air.
"Sir," said Mrs. Elton, unable to stifle her indignity, "do you know that you are speaking of the cloth - these two gentlemen are clergymen!"
"Oh, are they? Well, meant no offence, to be sure, against the reverends - but I calculate as how it's true enough of English people `in gineral.' I've met enough of 'em to know."
"Yes; it's remarkable how little English folks know of how things work in a real, thriving, bustling commercial-minded place like our great nation," chimed in his new friend, a beady-eyed little man named Carter.
With that, the two men willingly enough left the subject of the English, and returned to their hymn to business conditions. "Wheat'll go sky high this fall, I guess," commented the farm dealer.
"Yes, and that always affects everything. I don't quite reckon what goods I shall buy in New York, depends on what the market will be. Perhaps your business is not so affected by fluctuations?"
"No, that's right enough; people always has to farm."
"I declare that's so. Sound, practical activity, in business and farming - that's what this country is run upon. Not such aristocratical nonsense as they have in the old country."
And so on.
The journey was tedious, and all parties were relieved to reach the rising city of New York. The Eltons were enchanted by its beauty, the wide harbour and the green islands scattered in it; and then Manhattan itself, with its broad avenues, great shops, and handsome dwellings on the lower portion of the island, surrounding the Battery, is too well known to require any description. The rest of the island, as the passengers saw from their carriage, contained several charming villages such as that of Bloomingdale, and stretches of rolling farmland. Even before she had alighted from the coach, Mrs. Elton was ready to praise what she had seen of the city. "One might almost be in London itself," she cried, "though indeed it is not London, and there are no doubt many differences, this does have the appearance of a place where it might be possible to live a refined existence."
There was every reason to think so; for Dr. Channing had provided both the Eltons and the Bensons with introductions to persons of some consequence in the town, and a very pleasant fortnight was spent in visiting their handsome homes, where silk-covered furniture, carpeted floors, European china and silver, were on display, and the beautifully laid tables and excellently cooked, carved and served foods, helped put the boarding-house experiences quite out of Mrs. Elton's head. Yet it was still America, for every man seemed to think it his civic duty to spit in the streets; and at one of the city's greatest theatres, the visitors were shocked by the manners of the theatre-goers, which were far more rough and uncultivated, with men in their open shirts putting their feet up on the seats before them, and more spitting and talking and drinking going on during the performance, than they had ever witnessed in London.
Going to church was a considerable contrast, for in New York, the Eltons observed with some surprise, the churchgoers were almost exclusively ladies, daintily dressed in the height of the fashion. The men were somewhere else anywhere else, in the parks, or at the races, smoking or strolling - but wherever they were, they evidently did not feel themselves called upon to spend any part of their Sundays inside a church. Mr. Elton and Mr. Benson had a good deal of worried talk about this, but concluded that there was little they could do to attack this universal custom, as they were not to be stationed at New York; no doubt, upon the whole, Mr. Benson would find still more serious abuses in the South, and Mr. Elton among the Indians.
Art galleries, shops of all varieties, schools and institutes for the poor, and Dorcas societies for the ladies, were visited in this whirling fortnight, but what Mrs. Elton enjoyed most, and used to speak of reminiscently in later days, was the strolling pageant of Broadway. This was a street of almost unprecedented broadness and length, more than thirty blocks long, where ladies promenaded dressed in the French fashion, their elaborate silks, pelisses and parasols a-flutter with satin ribbons. Families drove out for an airing in handsome carriages, but these were forced to share the streets with the pigs and dogs that dined upon the refuse every householder threw into the midst of the handsome, broad avenue.
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